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You mean like the EULA from some microsoft products that read

"You may not use the software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services, infringe any intellectual property or other rights of these parties, violate any state federal or international law, or promote racism, hatred, or pornography."
?
For more info try this article

Apple's legal team is notorious for sending cease and desist letters any time someone copies the look of the aqua interface.

.:diatonic:.

Particularly interesting are IBM's positions regarding SCO's claims of ownership over Unix. For example, IBM disputes SCO's claims that Unix was originally developed by AT&T's Bell Laboratories; AT&T used to license Unix to other companies; AT&T licensed Unix to IBM; all commercial Unix flavors in use today are based on SCO's System V Unix technology; SCO owns the rights in and to all underlying, original Unix software code developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories; SCO is the authorized successor in interest to and the owner of all the contractual rights arising from the AT&T Unix agreements.

IBM also outright denies that its AIX flavor of Unix is a modification of SCO's licensed Unix.

If the case boils down to who owns UNIX and different flavours off it then I guess this case could drag out for years with endless lawsuits.
Since SCO can't afford that, and IBM can; SCO will probably go Chapter 11.

Oops hit submit too early. Let's try that again.

Timothy is chipping in with his 2 cents for the Microsoft marketing drive starting tomorrow, Thursday. I really wish there were a way to block both the ads and the shills/astroturfers.

The high level of security potentially available from using OpenBSD has been named as a worry. A number of posts have mentioned the nebulus terrorist threat and touched on the effects of lobbying. When you take into account lobbying from software companies, then the other real targets are nation states like Germany.

If Germany goes with Linux, BSD, or one of the other Free or Open Source operating systems, then they remain beholden to neither Microsoft nor the White House.

• *BSD / GPL licenses ensure freedom in how the systems are used and deployed
• Security + source code audits ensure that data and systems are less vulnerable to foreign control / monitoring.
• Development money spent on F/OSS drives the local economy.

If, on the other hand, F/OSS is blocked then they suffer not only financial punishment for the recent UN Security Council issues but also stay on a short leash:

• WPA ensures that MS/Bush can pull the plug
• DRM + EUCD + proprietary file formats keeps them on the leash
• Weak security and possible backdoors ensures that any resistance can be countered/monitored electronically.

So is this why Cisco wants to buy Linksys?
So "they" can then monitor home users directly?

Either problem alone would scare potential buyers, so it seems to be forbidden to discuss.

It would be convenient to skip the upcoming deluge of advertisements and astroturf and see trade magazines feature the F/OSS tools instead. Ads cost a fortune and MS could instead use the money to 1) hire developers to rewrite software in a secure, stable form, 2) hire lawyers for the upcoming willful negligence lawsuits.

Infoworld says, Ironically, Microsoft is touting its Windows server platform as a cheaper alternative to Linux. "We really feel that we deliver some unique value in terms of dependability, manageability, and performance relative to open-source products," Oldroyd said.

Mostly what I was suggesting is the archive/database and the tools to organize data inside of it. And how this could be tied into the browser directly, by means of the one-touch button which adds the page to your archive, and maybe even indexes it with information (meta tags and such).

The software DRM will soon be followed by a hardware implementation. With both the hardware and software DRM in place, non-military control of the Germans is possible if needed. If worse comes to worse, the White House can order Microsoft to use WPA to pull the plug on German computers. That will not be needed often because it will be possible to monitor general activities, and even the contents of specific documents, to effect smoother diplomatic solutions. In a tight spot, the desktop set's microphone activated to pick up conversations.

Audits by the Business Software Alliance can be used as a milder intermediate measure than pulling the plug and as a supliment to monitoring.

...since July last year. Go fetch.

Hello? Is this brain on? (-:

It's MICROSOFT'S JAVA IMPLEMENTATION.

The problem is NOT Java.

The problem is (and always has been) Micro$oft's purposely broken version of Java.

Most of the headlines give very misleading takes on nearly every semi-weekly critical patch. Rather than fix a problem they alone produced (in this case with their Java-variant) , the response seems to be to work on editors to change headlines and/or slide unfavorable articles quickly off the front of the site and into the back pages. Rather than improving performance, interoperability, stability or security, new EULAs forbid the publication of benchmarks. Or Ballmer or Gates, in extreme cases, chase after decision makers with junkets, golf trips and such.

And the same problems surface again and again.

Isn't it about time some kid points and shouts, "the emperor has no clothes"? We are not dealing with a crappy software company, but at best a skilled marketing company or at worst a pyramid scheme.

It's MICROSOFT'S JAVA IMPLEMENTATION.

The problem is NOT Java.

The problem is (and always has been) Micro$oft's purposely broken version of Java.

Most of the headlines give very misleading takes on nearly every semi-weekly critical patch. Rather than fix a problem they alone produced (in this case with their Java-variant) , the response seems to be to work on editors to change headlines and/or slide unfavorable articles quickly off the front of the site and into the back pages. Rather than improving performance, interoperability, stability or security, new EULAs forbid the publication of benchmarks. Or Ballmer or Gates, in extreme cases, chase after decision makers with junkets, golf trips and such.

And the same problems surface again and again.

Isn't it about time some kid points and shouts, "the emperor has no clothes"? We are not dealing with a crappy software company, but at best a skilled marketing company or at worst a pyramid scheme.

I am reminded of an Arab proverb about not letting the camel's nose into the tent, as soon the rest of the camel will follow.

Once the critical market share is reached, then client support for non-DRM/Palladium encumbered platforms can then be dropped.

A further indication is that Office 2003 won't be available for systems prior to Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP, plus the failure to join all other industry members and participate in creating open formats for productivity software. Any doubts that DRM+Subscription is not the near term goal can be put to rest by comparing the EULAs for those with earlier EULAs. Or see the sudden departure from the Web services group.

Perhaps we should also extend our attention to Microsoft's other desperate lobbying efforts. Or even to their financial crisis.

Native Posix Thread Library(NPTL).

The problem with using VNC to access Windows is that it violates your EULA. That's right, Microsoft has denied access to the competion through their EULA. Go read it some time. It's like Anti-Trust Law 101

The MS issue is that the licence says you must use an XP machine to talk to XP - you can use vnc to do that if you want. See Here for details.

For these guys, I guess that you'd have to confirm the OS of all remote desktop users and give them the same one as their remote desktop - XP home, XP professional, XP 2003 server, XP 2003 server datacentre...

I didn't see any previous comment explaining how using a scripting lanaguage causes one to "run into the wall when doing big projects."

This is an old wive's tale, that scripting langauges just don't scale. It's nonsense; while some languages (perhaps PHP) are not well-designed for large projects, others, such as Ruby, do quite nicely.

Ruby has a a far better OO model than PHP (or Java, for that matter); that one can label it as a scripting lanagauge does not diminish its beauty or power. Give it a shot before dismissing whole categories of tools. Check out these articles

I didn't see any previous comment explaining how using a scripting lanaguage causes one to "run into the wall when doing big projects."

This is an old wive's tale, that scripting langauges just don't scale. It's nonsense; while some languages (perhaps PHP) are not well-designed for large projects, others, such as Ruby, do quite nicely.

Ruby has a a far better OO model than PHP (or Java, for that matter); that one can label it as a scripting lanagauge does not diminish its beauty or power. Give it a shot before dismissing whole categories of tools. Check out these articles

Like how the Patriot is targeting friendly aircraft?

On Sunday, a Patriot Missile battery on the Kuwait border accidentally shot down a British Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado GR-4 aircraft that was returning from a mission over Iraq . Two British pilots were killed in the incident. Then on Monday a U.S. F-16 fighter jet fired at and destroyed a Patriot battery's radar dish after the pilot said the Patriot had "locked on" to the plane. Published reports have linked the mishaps to software problems with the Patriot.

One of the many cases

Database vendors do it because they can. Who want to fight ORACLE or Microsoft ?

And magazine bend over. They depend on the advertising revenue.

So, basically, most database benchmark you can find are biased. Such is life. :-)

While consulting, I've come across companies doing all sorts of dumb or just lazy things which make their sites slow and not very scalable. Then they get a big burst of unusual activity for whatever reason, their site crashes, and they like to claim conspiracy because it means it's not their fault.

I'll believe this is a DDOS when I see the IRC transcripts from the people claiming to be the perpetrators (if that's not proof, I don't know what is :) Till then, this is Al-Jazeera crying because their site couldn't handle sudden worldwide interest.

I think you should see your dentist for one of this - a phone in tooth implant.

If you want to know more about the Serial ATA technology:

Cnet

SATA and ISCSI

Intel Dev Paper

Maxtor White Paper

Serial ATA Working Group

In November, you'll be able to own your cell phone number. Expect a VERY high churn rate when that comes.

It seems like this chap is inheriting some challenging budget problems, and will need reasonably serious diplomatic skills to sort out the legacy of Stuart Lynn (ad-hoc member controversy) and negotiations over non-roman letter domain names.

- Web Standards Burnout Decried

So, is the existance of the Internet, which makes it easy to connect people world-wide, ultimately going to be the curse of most software professionals in the 'developed' world, when much lower salaried (and just as experienced) developers in other countries can easily undercut them for such services? Was the tech boom centered in Silicon Valley just an initial flameout with nothing but a few glowing embers scattered about?

Jon Udell created a bookmarklet called LibraryLookup to take the URL of the page you are on and pull off the ISBN and check your local library for the book. It can be used at places like Amazon.com. It is a very creative idea of using different websites to create the useful application. Now one would hate to see applications like this be outlawed. Maybe the difference is that the use is personal (fair use) and not "commerical".

"Although it's still early in the review process, it does look as though XP XML has been so seriously crippled as to be useless to anyone but the big content management and collaboration system providers," Edwards said. "Reports are that when saving to XML, [Office 2003] strips out the presentation and formatting information, leaving near raw content

InfoWorld also writes about Office 2003 and the new XML features:

An excerpt...

"Once valid, the document can be saved as XML in two ways. The default is to create WordML, which preserves Word's styles and formatting in an XML name-space that's separate from the one bound to the schema-controlled data. You can optionally save through an XSLT transformation which, in a publish-to-the-Web scenario, could translate WordML formatting into HTML/CSS formatting. Alternatively, if you tick the Save as Data option, you can instead save just the raw XML data. In that case, you can bind one or more XSLT stylesheets to the document, each of which can generate WordML styles and formatting."

Even as recently as last month, MSIE came in 6 out of 6 in a comparison of web browsers. Opera and Mozilla, among others, have it beat by a long shot in all categories (well, Opera costs, but I get my boss to pay). It's even documented in U.S. Federal Court records that MSIE acheived market share over Netscape by bundling MSIE with new copies of MS-Windows.

Quattro, Lotus 1-2-3 and other spread sheets were faster and more mature. It wasn't until MS-Excel v4 when Microsoft's alternativs started to come up to near the same grade as competitors.

Likewise with small desktop databases. Foxpro, dBase, FileMaker, Reflex, and others were still a length ahead of MS-Access. After all Microsoft is still playing catchup, though they did manage to buy out Foxpro. Oracle9i and IBM's DB2 by far offer the best performance and functionality for high end SQL servers. Postgresql and MySQL have the mid-range covered and would be what Microsoft's SQL server is trying hardest to compete with. The Microsoft SQL server is not up to snuff nor is it secure.

But almost-as-good won't displaced established tools. That's where leveraging and sales pitches comes in.

Early versions MS-Word were a unique exception among Microsoft's products in that they were actually competitive with contemporary products. However, whether MS-Word variants were actually better than WordPerfect, AMI and others is probably more an issue of taste than something objective. It and MS-Windows were used to shoehorn MS-Excel into sites.

I'm a big fan of tabs. I wish the folks at Mozilla could get their act together and define some way that Javascript can be used to open a new tab. They seem to be bogged down in an endless discussion on what is really the right thing to do.

For example, I would like to be able to make Jon Udell's Library Lookup bookmarklet create a new tab.

It's amazing how much information you can get kicked back by simply trolling SSN's. This reminds me of the scandal last year with Yale's admissions information, which a Princeton administrator obtained by simply entering SSN's and birthdates on their web site. A brute-force attack like this one, simply adding birthdate to the mix, could have successful results in other places, I'm sure.

The Inforworld link (that I was submitting at the same time that this story got posted, BTW), says they will be available in 2004.

get their Sparc archetecture up to speed

You may find this article interesting:

Sun has two surprises in store for users

Basicaly, what they are trying to do is embed tens of processor cores inside one chip. If they can pull this off sufficiently early, they may completely overwhelm their SMP competition as both IBM and Intel are at the point of embeding only a couple of cores in one die. Plus, their software has excellent SMP characteristics which may prove quite usefull.

From an Infoworld article on the subject:

"Governments signing up to the security program will be able to build systems that offer the high levels of security required for national security, Microsoft has said. However, government users will not be allowed to make modifications to the code or compile the source code into Windows programs themselves, according to Microsoft."

Yeah, real 'open'.

In contrast, I know SQL Slammer was reported day-of. In this case, a free patch was available six months prior to the worm.

That's because Steve Ballmer is an open-source mole inside Microsoft and he knows how things are supposed to be done.

It seems this version of Office has the potential to be the first version in a long time that has some solid new features. The XML file format has a lot of potential I think. I'm not really up to date with OpenOffice's capabilities, but from what I gather it seems to clone most of the capabilities found in Office 2000/XP. Is the same kind of support for XML planned in OpenOffice??

here
here
and
here
...but they keep getting modded down as flamebait or offtopic. *sigh*

And Oracle is dropping JDeveloper in a flavor of Eclipse (can't find the link... anyone?).

Sure, here's a link to an article that debunks your statement.

I read Bob Cringely's columns each week on both PBS and InfoWorld because I like his fanciful take on the things he writes about. But when he comes up with these pie-in-the-sky scenarios, he's almost never right. Just as he suggested Apple would/should port OS X to X86 and Microsoft should replace the Windows kernel with the Linux kernel. Just plain nuts. It also looks as though he compared notes with Charles Cooper at CNet/ZDNet

I think Sun only has to lose their emotional attachment to the Sparc processor. They have too much else going for them.

While attempts with viruses and worms may be more due to populartiy, there are other factors that result in an insecure system.

Just saying that viruses and worms are more popluar because of Microsoft's success is mearly a cop-out. Their success should be a benefit to their security (more resources should be dedicated to it), not an excuse for it.

For some good background, read Ed Foster's columns in InfoWorld. This guy has (thanfully) been waging a war in print against UCITA since it was first proposed. Here's his latest column on this very topic (ABA consideration of UCITA):

ITANIC SINKS YOU!

IN SOVIET RUSSIA
itanic
sinks
YOU!

IBM is cancelling development of Linux on itanium. See here

Try again: here it is

doo dah doo dah
itanium is going away
doo dah doo dah day

How many cases do you want? One? Two? Three? A Google search for "shrink-wrap license court case" turns up these and others; judging from that, more shrink-wrap licenses have been upheld than overturned.

You might argue that some or all of those cases gave "no extra rights" to the licensee. Since you did not specify "extra rights" beyond anything in particular, I assume you wanted wiggle room to squirm out of concrete examples.

Well if previous Apple server sales (pre xserve) are any indication, nobody is ;)

According to an InfoWorld Article, enough people have been buying the xserve to make it a success.

I posted a newsgroup question about a year ago. nobody had any answers.

my company sells computers that controll security systems. I specified abit motherboards because they were allegedly really stable. I have a BH6 at home that's been solid for 4? years of 24/7 use.

my company got seriously hosed when these computers started dying. I feel like someone should be responsible for my company's loss. whether that's abit or their supplier or whoever.

does anybody have any leads on where to go or what to do?

it just now occurred to me to write to Ed Foster of Infoworld and see if he can publicize the problem and convince somebody to step up.

If everyone who got hosed writes to him, he's more likely to take up our cause.

any other suggestions? thanks

Sure I can. Valuing ethics over business is exactly the kind of thing a bleeding-heart communist would do. Oh, and fine...he's a hippie too.

There are a lot of "bleeding-heart" organizations that value ethics over business, communism is only one of them. Why is RMS automatically a communist, and not a liberal or a libertarian?

Not at all. Look at companies that sell commodities like oil.

What does this have to do with free software? Apart from the fact that Linux is being used by some notable oil companies?

With open source, you don't develop assets so it's going to be difficult to get seed capital.

Once again, this only applies to companies that sell software as a product.

Open source is more likely to create unhealthy competition.

If all corporations that sell software were to follow the open source methodology, yes, unhealthy competition would run rampant. However, you assume that shrink-wrapped software is inherently good, that it is The Right Thing. I believe that the only way that market can succeed is by anthropomorphizing information, something I am firmly against. I don't believe that businesses have the right to bend a new medium to their will so that it may be profitable. The way we live should determine the way businesses attain profitability, not vice versa.

I was talking about "the power grabs, genocide, and spying on civilians."

Are you saying that just because RMS isn't trying to take over the world now doesn't mean he won't in the future? Well, this could apply to anyone, although it is pretty absurd.

Go read a historical (i.e. not full of American propoganda) version of these events.

Such as what?

Have you considered the logistics of parliamentary representation in an age when even the mail could take months?

Exactly. That's why it didn't make sense for the Colonies to be ruled by a country all the way across the Atlantic.

P.S. Who is the senior senator from Puerto Rico?

Funny. I'm well aware of the status-of-Puerto-Rico debacle, although frankly I have no idea what the hell happened since HR856 in 1998.

You think we are at opposite political poles.

I don't know if you noticed the part where I mentioned that it was a cursory evaluation, provided because I didn't have anything else to go on. Now it is clear that you aren't at the opposite end of the spectrum, and I guess you'd be a Democrat (but why can't you just tell me?).

You introduced the strawman argument of the runners shooting each other during the race.

This is in no way a straw man. The analogy was provided to describe my position on a tangential point. I didn't attempt to refute your argument that open source is bad for business this way; I argued that point by saying that open source only hurts a small subsector of businesses, and I don't think we need them anyway. The next idea I introduced, that all out war between businesses is bad for the public, was tangential, provided to further clarify my position on business practices. The analogy was used in its purest form: to let you know more clearly what I was thinking. On top of it all, you seem to agree with me on that point. This is not a straw man.

As for your third point, I already explained that we seemed to be polar opposites, since I had nothing else to go on and invited you to describe your position clearly, which was why I stated that you must be extreme if I am extreme. I can't believe you really took that seriously, though. The point I was trying to get across was that I'm not extreme simply because I have a different view of copyright. You seem to think that it is impossible to deviate slightly from the middle ground. Remember, you were the one tagged me as a "pinko commie," because my qoute said "Free as in Freedom." I only thought it fair that I return the favor.

But on to the meat of our debate...

First off, Janis never says that Verizon's suit is going to do her financial harm. Her point of view is that "The record companies say this decision will mean more money for musicians, but they have it backward. The downloaded music they're shutting off actually creates sales by exposing artists to new fans." Amazingly, incredibly, and completely illogically, Janis isn't primarily concerned with herself right now. She's attempting to make a point about the music industry as a whole.

With that out of the way, my topic is not indefensible because you're putting words in my mouth. I said that it requires a not-insignificant effort to determine if a download is from P2P or the web, I never said it was too difficult. It isn't. I know this because I spend a lot of time analyzing network traffic on a packet by packet basis (god bless ethereal). But that wasn't the point. Anyone suspected (can I not say this loud enough for you?) of downloading illegal music can be subject to a lawsuit without evidence. So anyone can be sued on what basically amounts to the RIAAs whim. The defendant would have to go to court, which costs $$. The idea is that the threat of litigation, and not the litigation itself, will keep people from downloading music illegally.

But how does this affect people who download music legally? Well, how do you tell where a file on a hard disk came from? You can't just look at a file once it's on disk and say "this was ripped from a cd," or "this was downloaded illegally." This means that if a person has a legal rip of a CD on their computer, and then downloads annother unrelated mp3 legally, the record company could provide "proof" from "experts" that they had illegally downloaded what they in fact ripped from their CD. Proving this to be fallacious is not exactly difficult, but it will still require time consuming court proceedings (which means a hefty expenditure of cash). As I already mentioned, it is the threat of litigation, not the litigation itself, that the RIAA wants to use against people. This isn't necessarily bad, as the threat of litigation is what keeps many people from doing bad things. However, the fact that they can use this against anyone without proof means that they can easily abuse their power to bludgeon legal music downloaders.

This all started when you sensed a logical fallacy in a generalization about Janis' statement that you created. I called you a jackass for that, insulting you because I'm a bastard motherfucker who does that kind of thing, with the clause that "I could be wrong, and am amply willing to be proven so." All you've managed to do is prove yourself to be more immature than I am, which is saying something (my name is freakin' ninjadroid). I'm going to bet, which isn't generally wise but that's ok because neither am I, that you are a computer programmer by trade, and you don't want RMS to put you out of a job. Furthermore, I'm going to bet that our conflict really boils down to our perspectives over copyright law (although you seem adament about the fallacy which prompted the US's fight for independence, but that's ok because I think they faked the first moon landing). So, I suggest that we drop the pretense and shift gears to focus on copyright, and whether the capabilities of the people should be intentionally impaired in the name of defending it. Furthermore, perhaps we should consider a different medium (email?).

Your call.